The present application relates to wireless reporting of events and more particularly to the wireless reporting of the state of animal traps.
The surveillance of multiple events at a common display is a routine event today. The surveyed events may be present states of doors and windows in a security system which are usually surveyed using hard wired sensors at fixed locations. The system components at the doors and windows are not moved from location to location so re-wiring is not a required event.
Certain items such as animal traps are frequently placed in many locations and then moved about as needs arise elsewhere. Ordinarily, an individual must remember where each trap has been placed and occasionally check the traps visually to see whether they have been sprung so that they can be reset and re-baited. The task of trap checking is made even more critical in certain commercial food establishments where prevailing laws invoke penalties if an animal has been trapped for too long a period of time. A need exists for a detection and display system which allows an operator to easily identify which of a plurality of animal traps needs to be tended to and further allowed the easy movement of traps without re-wiring sensors.
This need is met and a technical advance is achieved in accordance with the present invention which includes wireless transmitters in association with each of a plurality of animal traps and a central display unit which receives signals from the traps and displays indicia of the state of the trap.
In accordance with an embodiment of the invention, each of a plurality of animal traps includes a radio frequency (rf) transmitter and a sensor to detect the position of a movable part of the trap. In the case of a normal rodent trap, the movable portion may be the metal jaw of the trap and in the case of a humane trap, the movable portion may be a closing door. The rf transmitter may periodically transmit a signal which uniquely identifies the transmitting trap and which includes an indication such as set or sprung to indicate the position of the movable portion. The control unit receives each transmission from the animal trap transmitters and decodes it to determine the identity of the trap and the present condition of its movable portion. The central unit may then display the results, for example by means of a pair of light emitting diodes, one for set and one for sprung, associated with each trap designation. In other embodiments the change of state of the movable portion of a trap may trigger the rf transmission of the trap identity and the then current state of the movable portion. As with periodic transmission the central unit responds to each received rf transmission by decoding the information to identify the trap in which a change has occurred and display the current state of that trap.
In still further embodiments the rf transmitters of one or more of the traps may transmit status signals both at a regular interval, e.g., 2 minutes, and whenever a state change occurs.